The present disclosure relates generally to the analysis of automatic line insulation testing data and in particular, to a method of facilitating the retrieval, organization and analysis of automatic line insulation testing data.
A typical regional telephone company central office, or wire center, houses a telephone switch to connect telephone calls between two or more parties. A main distribution frame (MDF) frame includes a row of jumpers to connect the switch wires to cable pairs from outside of the central office. Some cables utilize paper as insulation between the wires in the cable. Air compressors, located in the central office, are utilized to minimize the amount of water in the cables. When a cable gets nicked, the paper inside the cable may get wet and cause a short in the cable. It may be necessary to deploy a technician to fix the cable depending on factors such as the number of shorts in a particular cable. In some cases, such as when there is only one short in the cable, the paper may be dry once the technician gets to the cable to repair it. Sending a technician to repair a problem that was corrected should be avoided and technicians should be sent to repair cables that need technician action. One way to determine if a repair package should be built to send a technician to correct a problem is to have criteria such as: only build a repair package if there are more than three shorts, or crossings, of more than twenty volts in a twenty-five pair complement; and if there is only a two volt cross in a cable pair then do not build a repair package as the paper within the cable will probably be dry once the technician gets there. Any criteria may be used to determine when to build a repair package and the criteria may be varied or modified based on experience (e.g., in general or in a particular geographic location).
Currently, many regional telephone companies utilized an off-the-shelf computer product called Predictor to compile morning reports detailing automatic line insulation testing (ALIT) exceptions. ALIT is performed nightly by equipment that sequentially tests lines in the central office for battery crosses and grounds. The Predictor reports that include the results of all the tests, including good cables and cables with battery crosses and grounds, are sent to a printer. The Predictor report for each state (e.g., Tennessee) requires about one box of paper each night. Each morning maintenance administrators (MAs) analyze the reports and build Predictor patterns so that the technicians in the field may correct the problems identified by the tests. The MAs must sift through a box or more of paper each morning to find the failures, or exceptions, that need to be fixed. This practice may be cumbersome for the MA and because it is manual, may be error prone. Also, it may take all morning for the MA to sort through a particular portion of the Predictor report, with repair packages not being built until the afternoon. In addition, the current process does not produce back-up information for determining what information was presented to the MA when a decision to build a repair package was made.